Ch. 6 Lesson Design for Classical Literature

I firmly believe that you can learn anything from anyone.  Just because one is a teacher in a concentrated subject, it does not mean that he/she knows everything about that particular subject.    Many times, when I think about my future classroom, I think about my senior English class with Mr. Geschke and how knowledgeable he was.  I think about how I could possibly one day teach like him and effect my students the way he effected me.  This goes back to Jago's theory that, "the truth is that most of what new teachers know about teaching has come from their own experience of schooling"(96).  This then brings up the question; How can one improve classrooms if they are teaching in a style that was implemented years ago?  I think this can be solved by compiling all of the other teachers knowledge into one style that can be used effectively and creatively; it can be adapted to each individuals style. Lessons must appeal to the teachers style and the students needs. 
I also really like the idea of Lesson Study.  I think it could be really beneficial to future lessons that could be taught.  The only thing that can come from lesson study is improvement.  In some ways this concept reminded me of the wikis that we have to create for the canonical literature.  The wikis provide us with a space to share lesson plans and a space to comment on each others posts.  This gets teachers to collaboratively work together, which is very helpful to each other. 
One of the lessons shared was the use of character webs.  I definitely think that I would use this activity in my classroom.  When stories have numerous characters or characters with complex names, the story can become very confusing.  I really like that the students have an easily accessible list of characters right in the book.  This provides great organization.